What should Catholic education look like today? As universities move toward more efficient and technical processes in higher education, is there still room for seeking truth and knowledge for its own sake? These are some of the questions explored by Timothy P. O'Malley, theology professor and director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. OSV News' Charles Camosy spoke with him recently about the state of Catholic higher education today and his vision for its reform.
Charles Camosy: How would you describe the typical contemporary university and higher education in the U.S. today? Acknowledging that there is some degree of diversity, do some descriptors generally apply?
Timothy O'Malley: If you read the Chronicle of Higher Education, nearly every issue uses the term "crisis." It's true that higher ed (whether Catholic or not) is in crisis. There is the crisis of the demographic cliff, the crisis of the sudden disappearance of research dollars, and the crisis of a loss of authority -- who trusts the university?
But of course, the word crisis need not be understood negatively. Luigi Giussani often said that a crisis is ultimately a decision point, an occasion of discernment.
Does the college or university want to be a space of encounter between students and truth? Between students and professors? Or are we okay with the "machinification" of the university? What do I mean by this term relative to universities? Learning and research alike are slow and often inefficient processes. A student's insight into a text or some mathematical theorem only occurs after a lot of false starts. Research and scholarship come about through years of contemplative study on the part of faculty members. But there is a push for immediacy and efficiency that interrupts both processes.
Several years ago, I read what I suspect was supposed to be a utopian vision of the future university that was highly efficient. Students no longer relied upon professors or texts for learning, but everywhere they went, there was a hot spot that enabled them to ask questions to a generative AI bot. Professors would only hold positions if they themselves became experts in such generative AI, giving up the slow work of teaching and research.
Catholic universities have a specific vocation here: We possess a vision of the human person, knowledge and the truth that does not conform to "machinification." In that sense, we can be bastions of a contemplative, even sacramental way of being and knowing, but we must possess the courage to swim against the stream.
Camosy: Your new co-authored book on this topic draws on figures like Josef Pieper and St. John Henry Newman. Why focus on these thinkers?
O'Malley: My portions of the book focused mainly on Josef Pieper, and my interest in him is precisely his refusal to let the act of human knowing become technocratic.
I first read Pieper as an undergraduate, opening up his "Happiness and Contemplation" in a second-level theology course. What I discovered in this work was a radical proposal: Human beings are made to be happy, happiness involves knowing, but knowledge is ultimately a contemplative act rather than a matter of technique. If you want to be happy, if you want to know, you need to learn dispositions of receptivity -- of beholding, receiving and ultimately doxology -- giving praise for what has been given through this contemplation.
Of course, at the time, I wasn't aware of Pieper's intellectual formation through study with the Catholic thinker, Romano Guardini. Nor, for that matter, did I recognize that Pieper shaped his vision of knowing as contrary to the technological optimism of the post-World War II era. Think Disney's Epcot: Through the usefulness of technological innovation, we're but moments away from the elevation of human beings to a higher plane of existence.
Pieper believes it's okay to take up a leisurely, useless form of knowledge. Not everything can be efficient or, for that matter, immediately useful. Sometimes, human beings read literature, produce art, write a poem or gaze at a sunset -- and the result of this is not something you can later put on your CV or resume.
Pieper's vision is therefore an alternative way of thinking about what it means to know. And a university, whether it admits it or not, always operates out of a theory of knowledge. I would prefer to teach at or attend a university governed by Pieper's account of knowledge rather than a technocratic paradigm that expects me to function as a machine.
Camosy: Folks obviously need to read the book for the full version, but can you give a summary of the positive view for reform of Catholic education you propose in this book?
O'Malley: The proposal for reform isn't that revolutionary. Namely, we have to slow down and operate the university out of a vision of knowledge rather than treating it as a research/scholarship factory. I wrote the chapter specifically on the vocation of faculty life. Teaching, research and administration as the work of faculty have sped up to levels that no human being could keep up.
The book's suggestion is to slow down. Give more time for grading (and let universities actually reward that encounter between student and teacher). Gather faculty together across disciplines to read each other's work. Reward a leisurely pace to university life, recognizing that teaching is not reducible to knowledge transfer but is instead always a slow, contemplative encounter.
We can't keep up with the machines, so let's stop trying. But that requires possessing a universal vision of what the university is up to. We need a philosophy for the whole university, something that unites the biologist, economist, nursing professor and theologian together in a common pursuit. Without that, we're not really a university anymore.
Camosy: Does any of what you propose have legs outside of a Catholic context?
O'Malley: I think so! In fact, I suspect that it's the vocation of Catholic higher education to offer another possibility for all university life in the United States.
There are so many different types of Catholic colleges or universities -- including the small liberal arts institution, the community college or technical school and the mega-research university. Across the globe, there are even more options -- it's why I've participated over the last three years in a global Catholic research initiative based in Rome -- there is every type of Catholic college or university imaginable across the globe.
What we share in common is a vision of the human person as a creature made to behold, wonder, discover and delight in the gift of the world. We believe that this is how we recognize the dignity of each person in our community of learning: We are made to discover truth as a gift. We are free to enact that truth that we discover in communities committed to the common good.
Yes, this is a Catholic approach to reality -- but it's also one that is prophetically humane.
Obviously, not every politician right now shares this vision of higher education -- they want students to graduate quickly with degrees that will enable them to contribute to economic innovation for the sake of economic growth.
Many academic departments themselves have stopped thinking about truth at all -- taking up a skeptical attitude toward all of reality -- the world isn't about truth but about power or control.
But the crisis in higher education that is universally recognized offers another way: What are we doing in a college or university? If many jobs right now can be replaced by a bot who can more efficiently write code or analyze data, what is the purpose of college? Of university life?
For millennia, colleges and universities have first been about cultivating humble wonder at the pursuit of truth in a community of friends, seeking together to know and enact the good.
It is for this reason that I'm committed personally to Catholic colleges and universities that engage in dialogue with all sorts of institutions. We can't become sectarian entities, refusing to talk to peers at other types of institutions. From the heart of the Church was born the university, and the renewal of the university (whether Catholic or not) will involve a renewed way of contemplative knowing across all universities.
Catholic colleges or universities need a renewal of all colleges or universities -- we depend on each other.
